


Running Up That Hill

by Mellaithwen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-17
Updated: 2007-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Coda to 2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose part one.</em> It’s not often Dean will call himself a failure</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Up That Hill

 

 

Dean laughs to himself. He can practically see Sam’s nose scrunched up, head out of the window in a desperate attempt to indeed avoid those damn onions...And Dean smiling like the Cheshire Cat. With a shit-eating grin that makes Sam groan as the rain falls through the open window and falls hard against his face.

Eyes closed against the rain.

 _Eyes closed, lips dripping blood._

The diner’s empty, save for the dead.

Dean screams out his brother’s name for the first time and he’ll do it again.

He’ll do it again.

*-*-*

It’s like walking up a steep hill in the rain. Your breath is all puffed up in the air, hard water smacking you in the face but as soon as you make level ground you’re hot and that heat seeps into your wet clothes and makes you uncomfortable. Sticky. It feels wrong, you feel ill. Your head spins a little, trying to adjust. But you don’t want to adjust now that you’re there. You just want the rain to fall harder; you just want to lift your head up to the skies and let it freeze your soul again. You want to go back down the hill.

You work your ass off to get somewhere and when you do, you wish you’d never gotten there at all.

Just like Dean wishes he’d never found his father, just cause the hunt; the days on the road with his little brother, before the shit hit the fan and they were the hunted not the hunters...

He likes those days better.

Because back then his optimism kept his dad alive, and his dedication to his brother kept Sam alive too.

Now he’s got nothing. No one.

And it’s all his fault.

Last man standing and all he wants to do is fall and pretend the blood caked in the corner of his nail-beds isn’t really blood at all.

*-*-*

Too many times he’s had to run cross country in search of Sam. Too many times it’s been out of their hands and Dean’s had enough.

He’s gonna find his brother and declare some kind of no-go-area-zone or something. Put it all out on the table that this is over, that he’s had enough. That he’s lost enough and he won’t lose Sam. He doesn’t care what he has to do, because he’s got nothing left to lose if Sam’s gone.

Dean won’t settle, not when the roadhouse is crumbled rubble. Burnt debris. More lives to this god damn war with unfair advantages on the other side.

Not when there are images being pushed into his brain and he’s given a taster of Sam’s agony, not when Bobby’s hand is on his neck in the same way Dad used to check if his boys were okay.

“Dean? Dean! Are you with me?”

This has gone far enough.

No more, he thinks. No more.

*-*-*

It’s five past midnight and the world falls away. There’s no fire. There’s no ash. There’s no light. But there’s a damn good amount of mud and rain, and too much blood and too many tears.

Dean hugs his brother.

Sam doesn’t hug him back.

And the older Winchester has no time to wonder at the irony that normally it’s the other way around because he’s too busy screaming.

“ _Sam!_ ”

And then there was one.

*-*-*

Dean doesn’t understand how it’s possible to be so numb and still be in so much pain.

He doesn’t understand anything anymore.

He doesn’t understand why sometimes he dreams about Reapers that aren’t old and frail and grabbing at him from every direction. He doesn’t understand why she seems so kind and why he fears her so greatly.

He doesn’t understand why Sam can do these things, he doesn’t understand why any of them can do any of these things.

He doesn’t understand why he’s still alive.

He’s been touched by death so many times that he’s tempted to get a restraining order, or at least sue the guy for sexual harassment .

He doesn’t understand why—aside from Andy’s deranged and now deceased twin—Sam’s the only kid with a brother.

  
_Was_.

Past tense, and that’s not right, and it’s not fair and he doesn’t  _understand_.

*-*-*

When Bobby comes back, Dean hasn’t moved.

And neither has Sam. The taller boy’s body is slumped against his older brother as Dean clings onto him desperately, crying into Sam’s hair and whispering things Bobby has no right to hear.

He doesn’t tell Dean to let his brother go, he doesn’t say they have to leave and he doesn’t say it’s too late.

But he doesn’t say  _it’s gonna be alright_  either and he doesn’t doubt that Dean knows it won’t be. He kneels in the mud and stays close enough to let the only remaining Winchester know, that he’s there.

Jake, the kid with the knife, Sam’s attacker, he got away, ran fast and disappeared into the woods and just as Bobby’s about to jump in right after him and brave whatever crap’s waiting behind the trees...he hears it.

A strangled scream that has him rushing back because nothing good can come from Dean yelling like that. Especially not yelling his brother’s name like  _that_.

They stay there until dawn.

Six hours and then the sun starts peeking through overcast clouds and the rain’s stopped but the mud’s still wet and they’re in deep, they know.

Dean feels the morning breeze bristle over his bloody fingers, still taught as they hold Sam in no lesser of a grip than he had when he was four. Just as much fear and responsibility in each tendon in his hold.

In his arms.

But Sam’s not crying, and even though to Dean, Sam feels just as fragile—Sam’s not a baby anymore and John won’t come out running from the burning blaze of their home and hug his boys so tight that Dean can barely breathe.

John isn’t there, Mary never made it out and Sammy...Oh Sammy.

Dean holds his brother tighter and chants I’m sorry until he’s choking on his own words and his tongue tastes like sandpaper and woodchips against his gums.

*-*-*

He doesn’t sleep, not once.

He rocks his baby brother to sleep, ‘cause that’s all Sam’s doing.  _Sleeping_. And in the morning he’ll wake up and bitch about his little scratch but that’s all. That’s all.

And they’ll find that son of a bitch, and they’ll gut him like a pig and Sam’ll scream no, Dean, don’t! But Dean’s gotta do it, just like he has to end all of this demonic crap. Just like he has to see Sam smile again and laugh, and bitch and moan and wake up. Open his eyes.  _Open your eyes, Sam, Sammy, please._

He’s just sleeping, so until his baby brother wakes up, Dean’ll stay awake for the both of them.

Only it doesn’t last.

Crying leaves him shaking and weak and his eyes droop without his damned permission.

If he’s alone, he cries. If he’s got company, he cries. Even when Bobby tries to get him to eat, to live, he screams and then he cries. His eyes are so red and swollen that he can barely see. It doesn’t help that every five minutes something pops into his head, a memory; a word, anything Sam did, or wanted to do. All of it makes tears fall and he’s blinded again.

There’s tightness in his chest that reminds of Rawheads and Reapers but it isn’t a heart attack and it’s not medical, not this time. It’s just loss that he won’t accept so it bunches up tight in the only place left it has to go. It crushes him, and makes his heart skip beats as he sobs. And his breath catches in his throat and he thinks,  _no, no, this is wrong, I’m dreaming again, everything’s gonna be okay_.

His daddy told him a story once, of bombshells and grenades and explosion after explosion. Buried dog tags in the wet ground because even nature’s on the other fucking side and fighting away from home.

His daddy said there was this one kid, barely nineteen, and even though John wasn’t much older, he still tells the kid to pull it together. He growls it, a command over his troop, but this one kid’s shaking like a leaf and he’s holding his gun close to his chest, aimed to the sky not the enemy.

His daddy said, he tried screaming and shouting and it only made it worse.

So, instead, he told the kid,  _it’s gonna be alright, we’ll make it home_.

And that was all he needed. Few words of hope, consolation, comfort. And the shaking slowed, stopped altogether. Gun cocked, ready to go.

He died all filled up with promise and lies.

John leaves that last part out but Dean works it out for himself years later when Sam’s in his arms and it’s all gone so wrong.

When Dean opens his eyes, he knows it’s a dream. When he opens them, he sees Jessica and Sam, and he sees his mother and father, and feels Carmen on his arm. Before dad’s heart-attack, Dean muses as he poses for the photograph he saw on his mantle, that lead him to his mother’s home in the first place. In this, his world of unreality and perfection, that’s too perfect, that’s so normal it hurts and it isn’t right, or as wonderful as he thought it would be.

But Sam’s there at least.

  
_This isn’t real_ , he whispers into his lover’s soft brown locks while his mother laughs in her husbands embrace and Jess tries to push past Sam’s defences to straighten out his collar that he insists is fine.

“Hey Dean,” Sam calls over, taking advantage in a male response that won’t crumble under pressure from a pretty blonde. Pushing his brother over the edge to even hear his voice. “What do you think? How’s it look?”

Sam turns around, head bent to show off his collar.

But Dean’s too busy staring at the growing red stain on Sam’s lower back. Bigger and bigger, it blossoms through fabric, staining tiny threads first pink then crimson and dripping and pulling with the weight.

Dean swallows back the bile in his throat in time to catch Sam as he falls into his waiting brother’s arms.

“I’ll fix it.” Dean promises, as Sam opens his mouth to speak.

His words go unheard as he jerks awake and sees Bobby staring across at him from by the side of the fire-place.

“You okay?” The seasoned hunter asks the loaded question with a thousand and one answers and reasons to boot to ignore the question forthwith.

“How long was I out?” Dean asks, referring to sleep as though it was a bad thing. Like he’d broken some code or promise to keep watch.

“Twenty minutes.” Bobby sighs, because he knows it’s not enough and nowhere near the amount Dean needs.

“Twenty minutes.” Dean repeats and tells himself that’s more than he needs when his hand is warm above Sam’s pale fingers that are colder than ice. When his breath hitches at the back of his throat and Sam doesn’t breathe at all. When Dean swallows burning alcohol in hope that it will shift the lump that’s stuck there and Sam’s left to lie there, still.

Twenty minutes, more than enough.

*-*-*

If he could, Dean would change it all.

If he had the power, if he had the know-how, if he’d never come across those necromancers when he was twenty-one and seen first hand that it doesn’t work, damn it he'd try in a second.

If he didn’t already hate his father for making deals with the devil, if he knew where to start, if there weren’t any consequences, if things could be made right again, if he could switch, if he could go back and run faster and pull Sam down away from danger...

If someone was there to tell him how, if he, if he, if he...

He’d change it if he could.

He swears he’ll still try.

*-*-*

It’s not often Dean will call himself a failure.

He’s not stupid, he knows that with every life he’s saved with every ghost he’s put to rest every attack he’s stopped...he knows he’s done good. He knows it won’t always be enough and he knows there are casualties and they bite him to the bone, each and every one of them. Their faces engraved on his mind, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying but always ending up where ever the after-life takes them. Always ending up in the same way. Dead.

Somehow, almost always, Dean finds a way to blame himself.

But he’s never really uttered the word  _failed_  before. Barely three times maybe? Not even?

 _It’s my fault. I didn’t get there in time. I tried. It wasn’t enough. I’m sorry._

He’s said them all. Variations, and sometimes all strung together in one sentence.

But  _Failure_?  _Failed_?

No. It’s a little too formal for his liking.

That was something you had to be called by another. Even the complete idiots in his classes at high school never got that reception. Never got that word. Even if Dean messed up on a hunt so royally that someone got hurt, that got his daddy pissed, even then, John never said  _that_.

Dean wonders if it was all saved up for this moment. Twenty years of never hearing that word, or feeling its entirety. All of it adding up to the seconds of holding—

Dean punches a wall.

Because that’s what he does. Shit happens and he takes it out on anything, anyone, he gets it out, he has to. He’s been quiet for hours by his brother’s side, a vigil, a silent requiem, reverting to the days when he daren’t not speak after  _Mom_ , thinking that if he was quiet enough he’d hear her voice again.

He can’t hear Sam and when he can’t bear it any longer, he lashes out. It sure beats falling asleep and seeing a perfect world that isn’t real and isn't there.

  
_Lashing out,_  it’s what he knows. What he’s  _seen_  his entire life. The nicest people in the world, the kindest, the most honest, if they die violently they come back with a vengeance. And  _they_  lash out. A thirst for blood and revenge and gore and crime and pain and hurting. And it won’t stop, it won’t go away.

You can turn every light on but they’ll still flicker, they’ll still burst and bulbs will still shatter across wooden floorboards and blood will drip, drip, drop through the cracks and holes of oak, stained red, not brown. It doesn’t matter who you lost, why you did it, they’ll still get you. Like a narrow minded hunter, they see black and white and nothing in between. No gray. There’s light and dark but no dusk, no dawn. It’s simple. It’s clean cut, like the blade. Like  _that_  blade.

Like...

 _It’s my fault, Sam. I didn’t get there in time, I tried. It wasn’t enough. I’m sorry Sammy._

“I’m so sorry.”

 ** _-Fin._**

  
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